The nightmare of the queues on the Northern motorway (TF-5) is long overdue. They started more than 30 years ago and no short-term solution is in sight. With more than 100,000 vehicles a day, and rising, the collapse is still certain. The vice president of the Cabildo de Tenerife and Minister of Roads and Mobility, Enrique Arriaga (Cs), was honest yesterday and acknowledged that the situation will hardly change “at least until 2028.” In his opinion, the end of these desperate traffic jams depends on two great works that the Canary Islands Government and that are included in the highway agreement with the State: the La Laguna bypass and the third lane between Los Rodeos and La Orotava, which would make the Bus VAO lane possible. The first is expected to “go out to tender shortly” and the second is still in the drafting phase. “Both will require about 5 years of execution, so they may not be available until at least 2028,” Arriaga sentences.
The construction of the third lane between La Orotava and the Tenerife North airport will be a very complicated project that will also require numerous expropriations. This first phase of the work will be especially difficult in an environment in which many homes and buildings are located on the margins of the TF-5, specifically in Tacoronte, El Sauzal, La Matanza, La Victoria, Santa Úrsula and La Orotava.
“I wish we could do magic,” underlines the vice president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, “but there are works that should have been carried out many years ago and we cannot fool people”. In his opinion, there are other complementary actions that “will not solve the whole problem of the TF-5, but they can help something”, such as the Padre Anchieta footbridge, the La Esperanza highway tunnel (TF-24) or the new sections of bus lane between Santa Cruz and La Laguna.
“There are works that should have been carried out years ago; you can’t fool people”
Another key action for the future of the TF-5 will be the closure of the section of the island ring road between El Tanque and Santiago del Mount Teide, in the northwest of the island, which could help reduce the influx of traffic from the North to the metropolitan area. This work was awarded in 2019 for more than 252 million euros, with an execution period of 4 years, which ends at the end of 2023, although it will hardly be fulfilled. Its budget has increased this year by 3.7 million euros due to price revisions. The Government of the Canary Islands calculates that the commissioning of this section will attract a daily average of 28,000 vehicles going from North to South.
If this section of the island ring comes into service in 2024, after five years of work, it could have a positive influence on the TF-5. However, two more sections are still pending. The one that should unite Buen Paso (Icod de los Vinos), La Guancha and San Juan de la Rambla, which went on public exhibition at the end of 2021 and has a cost of 175 million euros. And the most complicated, the one that must join the end of the highway in Los Realejos with San Juan de la Rambla.
«The closure of the Insular Ring will also be noticed on the highway»
Arriaga recalls that these are works that depend on the Government of the Canary Islands, whose development will also take several years. He does consider that when the section under construction is in service “it will be noticed, since the calculations establish that it will be much more profitable to go south through the north, at least from Tacoronte. And that will decongest the TF-5 somewhat ». Doubt is planted by the “bottleneck” that will form between Los Realejos and Buen Paso, in Icod de los Vinos. The improvement of the last section, between San Juan de la Rambla and the municipality of Drago, will be the first to be carried out. For the most conflictive section, which was already stopped in 2002 due to social protest, at the moment only the study of alternatives is underway.
Arriaga anticipates that in this study of route alternatives for the last section of the insular ring, the use of tunnels and viaducts that “allow the construction of a much straighter road than the current one, which would remain as a service route for population centers, gains strength.” of the coast”. For the island councilor for Roads, the objective will be “to build a new road with tunnels that affect the landscape and the protected areas of this area of the North as little as possible.”
The president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Pedro Martín (PSOE), yesterday was not as pessimistic as Enrique Arriaga and assured EL DÍA that “if the environmental evaluations of these key projects for the Northern highway (TF-5) are unblocked, we could start to see works underway next year.”
“Too many cars”
The regional councilor for Public Works, Sebastián Franquis (PSOE), declared in Cope Tenerife that the island’s problem is that “there are too many cars and it is necessary to promote public transport.” He also recognized that the works that are underway or planned are necessary “because there is a lack of infrastructure or the ones that exist are deficient.” He said that “Tenerife is the island with the most vehicles per inhabitant and one of the places in Spain with the largest number, so public transport should be greatly promoted.”
Enrique Arriaga pointed out that the excess of vehicles “is not something exclusive to Tenerife”, where work is being done to promote collective transport. However, a worrying phenomenon has occurred on the island in recent years: “Although users of public transport are growing, the use of private vehicles is also increasing. We have gone from an average of 2.5 to 3.2 journeys per day per vehicle».